SEASONS GREETINGS

It will be a Merry Christmas for Brittney Griner.

But not for Paul Whelan.

Which has driven American politics into its usual false corners.

This past week President Biden struck a deal with the world's worst reigning fascist, Russia's Vladimir Putin.  The Russians freed Brittney Griner, the WNBA basketball star they grabbed ten months ago and then sent to a penal colony for nine years because some hashish oil was found in her vape cartridges when she was departing the country last March. Griner, like many underpaid WNBAers, was moonlighting in her off-season for a team in Russia and had a medical prescription for the oil.  Putin -- who runs a country whose only exports are oil, gas and cyber-crime -- was in the process of beginning to get his ass whipped in Ukraine and thought he'd acquired some leverage -- or at least would "own the liberals" -- when his cops arrested a black lesbian American basketball star.

Once she was arrested and show-tried, the American State Department went into overdrive in an effort to get her out.  For his part, Putin wanted Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer who was two-thirds through a 25-year sentence for arms trafficking in connection with attempts to murder Americans.  Over objections from the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" crowd, Biden was initially willing to trade Bout for Griner so long as Russia released Paul Whelan as well.  

Whelan is an American businessman who the Russians imprisoned for espionage following his arrest in 2018.  

The Whelan arrest was a classic set up.  In Moscow, which he entered on his US passport (he is a multi-national with US, British and Irish citizenship) in order to attend the wedding of a service buddy, Whelan met a Russian friend (who was also a Russian Federal Security Service or FSB agent) beforehand and was arrested after the "friend" passed him a classified list of FSB employees.  The notion, however, that Whelan is a spy was (and remains) laughable.  For one thing, he was given a bad conduct discharge from the Marines in 2008 after being court-martialed and convicted of larceny, and that alone would have made spy craft impossible.  For another, when the CIA sends in agents, it uses diplomatic cover, which Whelan never had.

At the time of Whelan's arrest, American jails were stocked with high-value Russian prisoners (a high-value Russian prisoner is a prisoner either obsequiously loyal to Putin himself, a former KGBer/spy, or  a hacker/cybersleuth).  These included Bout (spy), Maria Butina (spy and obsequious),  Roman Seleznev (cybersleuth) and Alex Vinnick (hacker). When the US proposed that Griner and Whelan be swapped for Gout, the Russians insisted that Vadim Krasikov also be included in the deal.  Krasikov, however, is a Russian spy imprisoned in Germany . . .

By the Germans . . .

For the Putin-sanctioned murder in Berlin of an ethnic-Chechen in 2019.

At the end of the day, a double-swap was not possible.  

The Russians would not include Whelan with Griner  in any deal for Bout nor would they trade Bout for Whelan alone.  And the Germans would not agree to  release Krasikov. Biden therefore had to choose between bringing Brittney home alone or leaving both her and Whelan there for the foreseeable future.

He chose to bring her home.

And continue to negotiate for Whelan's release.

Since then, the reaction from America's various quarters has been sad but typical. 

It has also been anomalous.  

First, the anomaly.

The people with the biggest stake in Whelan's release, namely, his family, were told beforehand that Putin would not exchange him along with Griner for Bout, or him for Bout alone, and they wholeheartedly approved of going forward with the exchange to free Griner alone.  As Whelan's brother, David, noted to CNN, "Any time an American comes home is wonderful news. I'm so glad for Brittney and Cherelle.  It's a wonderful day."  In a later statement, he continued "As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays."

Talk about class.

The Whelans have it in spades.

The same, however, cannot be said for so many others.

Donald Trump called the exchange "a stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment" and wondered "why . . . Paul Whelan wasn't included in this entirely one-sided transaction". Marjorie Taylor Greene said Biden should be impeached for "trad[ing] a Russian terrorist . . . for a basketball player" while leaving "a US marine in [a] Russian jail".  Kevin McCarthy said the deal "made Putin stronger . . . and . . .  America more vulnerable."  Donald Trump Jr. snarked that the Biden administration "was apparently worried that their DEI score would go down if they freed an American Marine."  DEI is the corporate acronym for "diversity, equity and inclusion" and Tucker Carlson removed any subtlety. Griner, he said,  was brought home, "because she is a lesbian woman of color".   Whelan, he claimed,  "is a Trump voter and he made the mistake of saying so on social media,  and he's paying the price for that now".

This is all performative nonsense.  

Biden never had the option of trading Whelan for Gout or Whelan and Griner for Gout.  If Gout, who with good time had served two-thirds of his sentence, had to be locked up for the duration lest his release imperil national security (Kevin McCarthy's claim; and John Bolton's as well), neither Griner nor Whelan were ever getting out.  The Russians are only willing to trade Whelan for a spy and want what Germany will not give them -- Krasikov.  

So the choice here was not whether to leave Whelan in a Russian jail.

It was whether to leave both Whelan and Griner in one when only Griner could have been freed.

Putin is in the business of hostage taking because he thinks he has to be.  Krasikov basically committed a (Russian) state-sanctioned murder and will stay in jail for life unless Putin gets him out.   Bout was an ex-KGBer serving a 25-year sentence. Seleznev and Vinnick are cyber-criminals and thus particularly valuable in today's Russia.  

Trump (or the Trumps) and Greene and McCarthy's beef is not really with exchange as a matter of principle. Indeed, while he was president, Trump routinely made them.  In 2019, he traded three senior Taliban leaders for two Americans held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Earlier, he dealt an Iranian scientist for an American student held in Teheran. 

Truth be told, on the hostages issue, Trump more or less gutted the "no concessions" policy embraced by all previous administrations, Republican and Democrat.  He did that as only he could.  He made the issue personal in order to be able to claim credit. Once a president makes hostage release personal, however, the price for hostages (and their value to people like Putin) increases.

The reality is that Biden lives in this post-Trump world.  

In that world, no American family will accept anything less than full presidential commitment (and involvement) when it comes to trying to release Americans unjustly imprisoned abroad.

So the Trumps and Greene and Carlson are taking a different tack.

They are de-valuing Griner. 

A black, lesbian basketball player who avoids the national anthem as part of a BLM protest is not equal to an ex-Marine . . .

Especially one who was a Trump voter.  

She's just a DEI score. 

She doesn't get to leave. 

Even if the Marine wasn't being released in any case.

Wow!

These people make Scrooge look good.

The bottom line here is that Griner and Whelan are equal.  Griner's BLM protest no more disqualifies her than does Whelan's bad conduct discharge. Their respective and ostensibly different politics, sexual orientations and races are also irrelevant.  Neither one of them belonged in a Russian jail.  

Both of them should have been released.

One was. 

To their undying credit, the Whelans are celebrating that.

We should too.